ERIC TIME!

Good evening, human.

So, today, I was lucky!

Just arrived from Tokyo, for just 3 days in Yogyakarta, but surprisingly, Eric was having a holiday in Yogyakarta with some of his college friends. So, by that simple reason, we met. I was so happy to greet him in this city, since I was always promising all my high school friends, that if they about to come to Yogyakarta, it will be my hospitality. I’ll always accompanied them in the city, make sure they having fun here.

But, I had no intention about this one. If I were late for a day, I wouldn’t see Eric now. We didn’t really talked to each other about this, all the thing I remembered was Eric wished he could come to Yogyakarta ‘one day’.

And so, first, we meet up at the Taman Pintar (Smart Park), which is some amusement park located in Yogyakarta that specialized in learning facilities, of course, in a fun way. Well, it was actually presented for the kids, but is it wrong for people as old as us to went there? Not at all.

Aquarium, miniatures, informations, everything is here. We really could learn, literally everything in this place. My favorite one is the Dinosaurs part, because since I was a little boy, I loved lizards so much. And dinosaurs, always interpretated as one big huge lizard walking on earth thousand years ago.

The next one, is the miniature of the Borobudur temple. It’s so complex, and perfect in every meaning. It was like a huge souvenir, but no.

Isn’t it look great?

After that short visitation, we looked for some lunch. So, I took Eric and all of his friends to Pasar Beringharjo, the most famous traditional market in Yogyakarta, and offered the some Nasi Pecel.

Nasi Pecel is steamed rice, given some steamed vegetables with peanut sauce, and there also some other foods like fried tempe and tofu, tempe and tofu ‘bacem’ (cooked with sweet soy sauce), fried chicken, and others if they want some ‘extra dishes’.

Fulled and ready to continue. Next stop is the place next to the Pasar Beringharjo, which was some historical sites called Fort Vrederburg (Vrederburg Fortress).

Fort Vrederburg is the basecamp of the Netherlands troops back to the earlier 1900 era. It was also used as the local government building back on the Netherlands colonial era. It was huge and beautiful place now. Even becomes more beautiful after the restoration of the sites.

There, we walked into the museum inside the sites. My favorite part of the museum, which was originally separated into 3 sites, was the “Guerrilla Zone’, which was designed as a room full of statues, which represented the Indonesian fighters fighting the Netherlands troops with the guerrilla tactics. Here is my favorite statue inside the zone.

That’s the last zone we entered the museum. After that we’re going to the center of the fortress and found some other statue, as Netherlands troops, Japanese troops, Indonesia fighters and else. And so, I found my ‘great-great-grandfather’ statue there. Here I am taking a photo with him.

I was like curious about his katana and saying, “grandpa, is it sharp?”

And so, the last is for the best. Eric and I had been friends since we were a little kid. We went to the same kindergarten, the same primary school, and met again in highschool. Here is my photo with my best friend, Eric.

Thank you for coming!